Eat Drink Man Woman

The directorial marvel that is Ang Lee noted quite accurately in a later interview that movies all arouse through sex or action these days, but no one arouses through food. With this film, however, he has set about righting that wrong. Food is such a major construct of the storyline and the family living within that story that it appears at every turn, with no exotic dish served up twice.

Delicious at every turn, Eat Drink Man Woman is a sweet Chinese film that centres around Mr Chu and his three wayward daughters. Cooking as a master chef for 30 years, Chu makes a point of the family sitting together to a groaning table every Sunday evening. Tiring of life alone with dad since their mother’s passing, the girls all find (much to their delight) their lives taking them away from home more and more. Chu pours his sadness into his work, creating magnificent meal upon meal although he lost his sense of taste after his wife died. Finally reaching a crossroads, with family members all headed in different directions, it becomes more and more difficult for Chu to bring up his own plans knowing how they will affect the family.

"Kids are creditors collecting for the sins of our past lives..."

This is a touching portrait of family life that on one hand is quite familiar, yet on the other is quite different from Western ideas of ‘family’. Chu’s awkwardness with his daughters as he tries desperately to understand them is captured brilliantly in Sihung Lung’s performance as the family patriarch juggling traditional values and his pride in his girls. As the film progresses we see more and more of the family gatherings, with new conflicts arising as old ones are concluded. There’s a powerful statement here about moving on and leaving the past to itself, particularly in the brooding regret of the eldest daughter, holding a torch for the man who broke her heart several years ago.

Although it starts out a little slowly as we get to know the characters, it becomes an inviting network of tangents as we progress until finally we are ensconced and must know what happens next. Eat Drink Man Woman is a well constructed tale that is told cleverly by Lee, with nicely positioned subplots integrated around each other in a delightfully subtle manner. A fabulous cast turn in great performances that truly inspire us to care for them as we travel to the banquet and sit to eat with them.

Whilst the picture is a little washed out colourwise, for the most part it’s quite clear and well transferred. There are very few, if any, artefacts and the shadows are all okay with no loss of detail. Blacks look good, particularly with so much beautiful long black hair displayed prominently throughout the film. There are a few minor instances of aliasing in finer details like pinstripes, traffic lines, building sites and bedlinen but these aren’t very disruptive to the picture as a whole. Flesh tones are all well lit and come across nicely as well.

Subtitles are an interesting thing here. With the dialogue being entirely in Chinese, the subtitles are nice and clear, without that annoying black bar featured in some subtitled movies. However, upon watching the interview with Ang Lee from the extras menu, some scenes included within that piece are greatly changed with different subtitled dialogue. I dunno what the go is there or why the film contains different text, but that was something obvious I noticed during that recent (2001) interview.

Unless you speak Chinese, the dialogue isn’t so important here sound wise, but regardless of that, it still sounds very clear if you do speak it. The limited sound effects are okay, particularly those in and around the kitchen during menu preparation. There’s lots of chopping and sizzling so real and well synched that your mouth will water. An unfortunate point of the sound is the music, which booms in considerably louder than the rest of the audio within the movie and again on the menu screens. However, the music is rather nice, although some pieces used for a fun effect reminded me very much of that awful bloody theme from Sex and the City. I hate that show.

Quite a swag for a foreign film, regardless of the fact Ang Lee directed. First up is the previously mentioned Interview shot in 2001 with Lee speaking quite frankly about himself, his ambitions and the ideas he was inspired by to write the film. There’s some nice explanations regarding characters and storylines lifted from his own life and his rejection of Hollywood offers until he’d cut his teeth as a Chinese director (which was very refreshing, I gotta say). After hearing Lee speak though, I couldn’t help wishing he had recorded an audio commentary to detail what he only scratched the surface with in the interview. Alas.

This is followed by the World Cinema Collection, which is a nice way of saying "Here’s yer trailers, punks". These include The Best Man’s Wedding, Taste of Others, Read My Lips and Respiro, which has been absolutely destroyed by computer malfunction. My copy is rife with stilled staticky images, massive pixellation breakdown and audio crash. Regardless of being a trailer, this is a pissy effort for a final cut on DVD.

However, we move on to Biographies of Ang Lee with actors Kuei-Mei Yang, Chien-Lien Wu, Yu-Wen Wang (the three daughters), Sihung Lung, Ah-Leh Gua and Winston Chao. Quite interesting to look at, particularly at the range of experience and the occurrence of a good deal of them in Lee’s previous film, The Wedding Banquet.

Last up there is the standard theatrical trailer (with a crap Western voiceover) and a photo gallery with 18 shots of on set, behind the scenes and the food! And it looks soooooo good!

As noted, the film starts a little slowly, but once the characters are established it gets up some steam and starts cooking. Delicious acting and a tasty story with a sting in the tail sets the table for a sumptuous two hour banquet. Some palatable appetisers in the extras menu arouse our taste buds to the delectation of the film, and the remains of the menu work well as a sweet dessert to complete the meal. Yummo!

Bon appetit.